Spain proved pesky, but at the end of a physical, hotly contested game Sunday the U.S. won the gold medal at the Olympics with a 118-107 victory at Wukesong Indoor Stadium.
"I'm just so excited," Kobe Bryant, who had 20 points and 6 assists, told NBC. "We've been wanting this for years. I'm so happy we won this thing."
Spain got to within two points, at 91-89, of Team USA by scoring the first seven points of the fourth quarter. Then Bryant gave the Americans some breathing room.
He hit a runner on a tough drive, a 3-point shot and then converted a 4-point play that helped boost the Americans' lead to 108-99 with 3 minutes, 10 seconds left.
Spain ran out of gas.
""They're a tough team," Bryant said. "They're not world champions for nothing. They had us on our heels for some time, but we were able to keep the pressure on. They had a helluva game."
Bruce Springstreen's "Born in the USA" blared on the arena speakers afterward.
"This team's not about the starting five, it's about all 12 of us," Dwyane Wade told NBC. "It's not about the name on the back of the jersey, it's about the three letters on the front of the jersey."
Wade powered the U.S. with 21 first-half points, when Bryant and LeBron James were in foul trouble. He finished with a game-high 27 points.
Last week in Group B play, the U.S. beat Spain, 119-82. The Spaniards were hobbled Sunday without starting point guard Jose Calderon, and then 17-year-old backup Ricky Rubio injured his right wrist in the first quarter.
But they battled until the last couple of minutes. Rudy Fernandez led Spain with 22 points and Pau Gasol, Bryant's teammate on the Los Angeles Lakers, chipped in with 21.
The game was billed as the culmination of a three-year commitment by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, his staff and a band of NBA stars that had lost a step with the rest of the world.
The U.S., which won gold in 2000 in Sydney, had failed to even play in the previous three finals in international competition, which included the 2002 and 2006 World Championships and the 2004 Athens Games.
That was a first for the Americans, a futile run that showed that the U.S. had lost a global step on the basketball court.
Actually, Team USA’s run to Chinese gold started only last year. In 2006, remember, it lost to Greece in a semifinal of the World Championship in Japan. Only those two finalists received automatic berths in the Beijing Games.
That was the best thing for the U.S.
Coach K and team managing director Jerry Colangelo gathered a select group in Las Vegas for 43 days last summer, and that’s when it formed the chemistry and cohesion that were so vital.
The U.S. belted all 10 foes, by an average of almost 40 points, in the FIBA Americas tournament in 2007 inside the Thomas & Mack Center. That gave it its spot in Beijing.
That gave outsiders all the information they needed to determine if this would be just another selfish, arrogant U.S. team that thought it could show up anywhere, anytime, and win.
It also helped that Bryant had never played for his national team. His ruthless style, especially on defense, paced it. He played with a broken pinkie, gaining an adrenaline reserve when his Lakers failed to beat the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals.
Team USA creamed Canada at the Mack in its final Olympic tune-up on American soil, and then defeated four opponents, in Macau and Shanghai, before the Olympics started.
Until Sunday, the Beijing Games were no contest. The U.S. went 5-0 in Group B play, leveled Australia and Argentina in the knockout stage, and then finished off Spain for the gold.
At Valley High on the team’s last day of Las Vegas preparations, Colangelo told the Sun that he expected the team’s offseason relationship with Las Vegas to continue.
With results like Team USA produced, no doubt Las Vegas will continue to embrace the national team.
“All I can say is, that might have been one of the great Olympic finals of all time,” Colangelo told NBC. “We had a mission, to get something done. The word is 'exhilarating.'
“I’m so excited and elated for this group of guys. We’ll celebrate when we get back to the hotel.”
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